Reuters AlertNet Lite - Gunmen kill nearly 20 Iraqi, foreign troops

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Gunmen kill nearly 20 Iraqi, foreign troops

05 Apr 2007 13:22:36 GMT
Source: Reuters

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A U.S. soldier stands guard near the scene of a suicide bomb attack in Baghdad, April 5, 2007. A Baghdad satellite television station run by Iraq's biggest Sunni political party briefly went off the air on Thursday after a suicide truck bomb exploded nearby, killing one person and wounding three.
REUTERS/STRINGER/IRAQ

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(Recasts, changes dateline)

By Dean Yates

BAGHDAD, April 5 (Reuters) - Gunmen have killed nearly 20 Iraqi, British and American soldiers in the past 24 hours, officials said on Thursday, underscoring how deadly the country remains four years after the U.S.-led invasion.

The attacks took place in Baghdad, near the northern city of Mosul and the southern oil hub of Basra.

Four British soldiers and an interpreter were killed by a roadside bomb that destroyed their armoured fighting vehicle when they were ambushed on the outskirts of Basra, a British military spokesman said.

"The unit was involved in an operation elsewhere. As they were on they way back from the operation it was targeted by a roadside bomb in conjunction with small-arms fire and rocket-propelled grenades," he said.

The nationality of the civilian interpreter was unclear.

The British military denied accusations by Iraqi police that British troops had stormed a police checkpoint close to the scene of the attack shortly afterwards and beaten some police.

Six British soldiers have now been killed in Iraq this week, making it one of the deadliest for British forces to date.

At least 140 British soldiers have now been killed during the Iraq war. More than 3,260 U.S. soldiers have been killed.

Gunmen also killed 10 Iraqi soldiers and wounded one in an attack on Thursday on their checkpoint near Mosul, an army source said.

The source said at least 40 gunmen attacked the checkpoint at dawn northwest of Mosul, setting their vehicles on fire and seizing their weapons.

Separately, four American soldiers were killed by two roadside bombs in and around Baghdad on Wednesday, the U.S. military said.

Those attacks followed a relatively quiet period in Baghdad, where U.S. and Iraqi forces have deployed thousands more troops to enforce a new security crackdown seen as a last-ditch attempt to stop the country tearing itself apart.

Sectarian violence between Sunni Arabs and majority Shi'ite Muslims has escalated since the bombing of a Shi'ite shrine a year ago. Since the U.S. invasion in March 2003, tens of thousands of Iraqis have been killed and millions displaced.

BIG CRATER

The attack in Basra tempered jubilation among British troops in Iraq after Iran sent home 15 British military personnel it had held for two weeks after seizing them in the northern Gulf.

The Basra blast left a crater in the road at least a metre (yard) deep and several metres across.

"We heard two explosions that shook the house. I went out and saw one armoured vehicle that was completely destroyed and another with less damage," said one resident.

Prime Minister Tony Blair said in February Britain would begin withdrawing a quarter of its 7,000 troops, who are stationed mainly in the Basra area, in coming months, so Iraqis could eventually take full control of Basra province.

The U.S. military also said an army helicopter with nine people on board went down south of Baghdad. Four were injured.

A statement did not give the cause of the incident or any other details. Witnesses reported seeing heavy gunfire force the aircraft down in an insurgent stronghold south of the capital. (Additional reporting by Ross Colvin, Aseel Kami, Dean Yates and Yara Bayoumy in Baghdad)

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Last updated:Thu Apr 5 13:24:27 2007